Zark's

NASA's First eBook

You can download X-15: Extending the Frontiers of Flight" by Dennis R. Jenkins free from NASA at this NASA site. They have even made it available in both Kindle and Sony eBook formats.  I downloaded it from the web and then manually installed it on my Kindle.  Kudos to NASA for truly advancing science by making it available to everyone.

Photo Credit: NASA

North American built the X-15, a rocket-powered aircraft.  It was the successor to the Bell X-1, which rocketed Chuck Yeager past the 'sound barrier' on 14 October, 1947.  The X-15 was carried aloft by a B-52 to begin a flight.  Once dropped, the pilot would ignite the rocket engines and shoot upward.  Although the program was cancelled in 1968, it established manned aircraft speed records that have not been broken.

The X-15 is an interesting subplot in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff.  If you recall, many of the nation's best pilots were excluded from NASA's first call from Astronauts.  The criteria of a college diploma excluded such notables as Chuck Yeager.  So while the big research dollars were diverted to would-be Buck Rogers such as Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn, the Air Force continued to channel a few dollars to keep the X-15 program flying.  (According to Wiki, John Glenn didn't have a diploma, but was still admitted.)

I just downloaded the eBook a few minutes ago, and have not yet read it.  I did scan through the book (that is a little painful, as you know, on eBooks).  One thing that caught my attention was a conclusion that the X-15 program would never survive today's bureaucratic, political, and risk-averse world.  It just couldn't happen.  Mmm.  Our pioneer DNA must be getting stretched thin. 

Setting a Nuclear Course for Energy Transition

The Department of Energy today announced a blue-ribbon commission to recommend a course for America's Nuclear Future.  With direct guidance from the White House, the commission is to, "conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, including all alternatives for the storage, processing, and disposal of civilian and defense used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste."  The back end is typically described as interim storage, reprocessing, and waste disposal. 

Secretary Chu said the Commission would be co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.  Since the Yucaa Mountain Repository was scuttled by the American government early last year, there has been no strategy for the storage or reprocessing of nuclear waste.  Several decades ago, America eschewed reprocessing for fear of nuclear proliferation - reprocessing produced near-weapons-quality material.  Yet today, other nations are reprocessing the nuclear waste, and frankly, it isn't a real good idea to just bury it.

Is Nuclear Power the Future explains on Thursday night, President Obama requested "a new generation of safe, clean, nuclear generating plants."  The USA Today article tells that nuclear plants present an ideological dilemma for environmentalists.  They are opposed to fossil-fueled plants, but rightly wary of nuclear waste.  But, the graph below from the EIA website shows the expected trend is not good for U.S. energy independence.  (Nor greenhouse emissions.)

The Domestic Uranium Production Report Quarterly tells that in 3rd quarter 2009, the U.S. produced 957,000 pounds of U3O8.  The concentrate was produced by four operating sites, three less than a year earlier.  That news, just like the nuclear capacity curve, is why the U.S. (and most of the western developed nations) needs a new nuclear course.

Mmm.  Perhaps I should not give nuclear critics any more material, but did you see, Alligator found at Kansas nuclear plant?  Despite very seasonal weather in the mid-section of the country, the water exchange from the nuclear plant keeps the water warm year-round.  Somehow the four-foot-long tropical alligator had been able to survive for some time on the plentiful fish near the plant, until a fisherman found it dead from an unknown cause.

A Noble Attempt to Clone the Ibex

An interesting nature website, MongaBay.com, recently described known animal extinctions that occurred in the last decade. Gone: a look at extinction over the past decade tells that the Yangtze River Dolphin, Chinese paddlefish, the Hawaiian crow, and the western black rhinoceros were casualties in the past ten years. Another, the Pyrenean ibex died, but briefly came back to life.

The Pyrenean ibex once roamed the regions of Spain and France in numerous numbers. Yet by 1900, Wiki tells their numbers were down to a lowly 100.  Naturalists are unsure why the goat population became depleted.  Perhaps as the natural habitat changed, they were unable to find sufficient food or shelter.  The very last Pyrenean ibex died on January 6, 2000, when a tree fell upon the lone survivor of the species, a female named Celia.

Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning tells that scientists preserved skin samples of Celia in liquid nitrogen and in 2008 began preparing 439 embryos using somatic cell nucleus cloning.  (The same as Dolly.)  57 of these were implanted into surrogate mothers, with only one female being born.  Sadly, it died only 7 minutes after birth, due to breathing difficulties.

Perhaps researchers will try again, to bring Celia's DNA back to life.  But perhaps the DNA is defective, and the explanation for the immature lungs.  Failures will lead to future successes, and scientists are preparing a global tissue bank to collect and preserve nearly extinct tissue.

The Frozen Ark project is a consortium of natural museums and other organizations, with its secretariat located at the University of Nottingham.  As their name implies, the idea is to preserve the DNA of today's species so that if a falling tree kills the last dodo, a DNA bank is available.  Their website tells they currently have DNA or tissue preserved for over 1,000 species.  Something I found interesting - Collection Protocols - Biopsy/Tissue samples.  They prefer a dry liquid nitrogen carrier that can maintain the tissue samples at -150 degrees for approximately three weeks. 

It is a great project and a great service to our planet.

No Buck Rogers and No Kindle Killer

The Orlando Sentinel caught the story immediately - Obama aims to ax moon mission.  It summarizes the budget to be released as - plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead.  Likewise the new rockets and crew vehicles.  The vacuum will be filled slightly with a new heavy-lift capability to be developed over perhaps a decade.

Ironically, Obama's Renewed Focus on Jobs Could Come at Expense of Moon Mission explains that the budget cuts to NASA will be used to fund additional jobs stimulus for the U.S. economy.  Confused?  Me too.  Often though, these 'leaks' are used by an administration to 'float' ideas prior to officially announcing them.  Let's hope that the public favors aerospace jobs as an intellectual investment instead of other economic stimulus.

Like many, I kept up with the Apple iTablet announcement today.  It is hard to tell, but I agree with the Sydney Times - Apple's iPad no Kindle killer - yet.  People who read rather than watch videos wil prefer the e-ink and lower prices of the Kindle.  But it does constitute competition for the Kindle, and Amazon will have to keep innovating or lose.  I think that is healthy for consumers.

Similarly Kindle needs to provide similar capability as Sony Reader Devices Can Now Borrow E-Books From Libraries. Basically the books can be 'loaned' to others, and they have to be returned before the owner can access them. Just like a physical book. Neat idea, isn't it?

Anti-Aging Drugs Fail Expectations

There is a practical side to an engineer.  Could there be one square centimeter of Florida that still hides Ponce De Leon's Fountain of Youth?  Is there a single permutation of 11 herbs and spices that hasn't been attempted for anti-aging?  Yet ...  On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice to have a 26-year-old body forever?

Because of that, the pharmaceutical companies have been investing. Doubts Build On Glaxo's Antiaging Drugs tells that GlaxoSmithKline invested $750M in Sirtis Pharmaceuticals whose experience was in resveratrol, a drug believed to enhance the production of SIRT 1.  (SIRT 1 is a protein associated with cellular regulation.)

Resveratrol is a chemical found in the skins of grapes, some berries and nuts (including peanuts).  The Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State tells that administering resveratrol to yeast and worms does increase their lifespans.  The difficulty is the compound is quickly metabolized and eliminated by humans.  Some have suggested the French paradox of moderate wine drinking combined with other negative lifestyle factors indicates this is more than theory.

However, the Forbes article tells that Pfizer has released a study of resveratrol, suggesting the chemical does not even impact the SIRT-1 enzyme.  This collaborates with a study last year by Amgen which had the same conclusion.  The competing researchers believe an experimental artifact was responsible for the initial claim that resveratrol extended the lifespan of fat mice.

Yet Scientists doubt on anti-aging red wine drugs suggests that even though resveratrol may not be an anti-aging drug, it still has many other benefits. Red Wine Compound Resveratrol Demonstrates Significant Health Benefits explains the chemical does have anti-cancer and protection of the heart and brain.

Mmm.  If you find the Fountain of Youth, send me an email.

Color and the Brain

I just finished reading a new science fiction novel by Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker.  It is a little edgier or bizarre, than Mistborn, which I enjoyed greatly.  Still, Warbreaker is a worthy purchase (less than $10 on Kindle).  Sanderson creates a world where the highlands are very drab and have little natural color in the environment.  Consequently the kingdom that lives in the environment treats color as unnatural and something to be avoided.  In contrast, the lowlands are tropical, and colors abound, especially because of bountiful plants that produce inexpensive dyes.  This kingdom treasures color in everything.  One of the story threads is the distrust between the two kingdoms simply on whether they like colors in their clothing and everyday life.

Sheesh.  How did I get here?  Oh, Color Plays Musical Chairs in the Brain explains that the human brain associates color as an attribute to an object.  This sounds very familiar to software engineering's object oriented programming.  (In this paradigm, data and attributes are connected or stored together.  For example, a user window would have size and color linked as attributes to other information necessary to create the window on the computer display.)  Also familiar is the chaos that can result if a software object's attribute becomes unlinked from the object.  Hackers exploit that kind of error.

It turns out, that unlinking occurs in the brain, too.  The brain has two independent perspectives of the visual object coming from either eye.  For those not 3-D challenged, the brain processes those two patterns and associates them as the same object.  But what happens if the eyes see different colors for that object?

Using polarized light, the researchers were able to have the left eye see green, but the right eye would instead see a red color.  That violates the brain's processing algorithm, because in the natural world, an object has only one instantaneous color (unless we are discussing quantum theory, but let's don't).  Similar to a computer's divide-by-zero error, the human would see a green object, but there is "disembodied red" in the scene.  The brain will erroneously paint other spaces in the field of view red, because it has to associate that 'red' with something in the scene.

Fascinating, isn't it?  The Science Daily article explains the research is described in the paper, "Color-Binding Errors During Rivalrous Suppression of Form."  Mmm.  Seems like that could be exploited in humans, just like machines.

Scramble to Find Sufficient Lithium for Electric Car Batteries

Wiki informs us that lithium is the lightest metal, and the least dense solid element.  The elemental metal corrodes quickly when exposed to air.  It was first exploited as a high-temperature grease in World War II.  Lithium-6 was militarily strategic because when irradiated, it produces tritium, used in nuclear weapons.  Until the mid-80s, the U.S. was the world's largest producer of lithium.

But that was before the lithium-ion battery.  Today's lithium-ion batteries use a lithium compound instead of metallic lithium, which is much safer than the earlier generation batteries.  Lithium-ion batteries produce 3 volts per cell compared to 2.1 volts for lead/acid and 1.5 volts for the common zinc cells used for flashlight batteries.

The U.S. Geologic Survey reveals Chile was the leading lithium chemical producer, with Argentina, China, and the U.S. also producing the product.  America is the leading consumer of lithium products.  The U.S. has 760,000 tons of lithium reserves, compared to 13 million tons in other countries.  The top four reserves are - Bolivia, Chile, China, and Brazil.  The world's oceans also contain much, much, more, but it will take technology to exploit the lower concentrations.  Born in the Big Bang, lithium to power hybrid vehicles tells the price of the metal is about $60,000 a tonne.  Today, about 25 percent of the world's production is used for batteries.

Automakers drive investment in lithium explains that manufacturers are eager to capture supplies for their future products.  Toyota has announced a 25 percent ownership of a lithium mining project in Argentina.  The Gazette article explains total demand for lithium is increasing 7 percent annually, with battery usage increasing 35 percent annually.  Mitsubishi earlier announced a project in Argentina. 

We're Here - Proclaims Asian Carp DNA

Wiki explains there are several species of Asian Carps.  Within the U.S., typically Asian Carp describes silver, bighead, grass, and black species, which are considered invasive.  Silver carp are easily spooked by boats and jump into the air where they often strike the boaters, sometimes with serious injury.  (They can grow to four feet long, weighing 100 pounds.)

Asian Carp and the Great Lakes tells that "the bighead and silver -- were imported by catfish farmers in the 1970's to remove algae and suspended matter out of their ponds. During large floods in the early 1990s, many of the catfish farm ponds overflowed their banks, and the Asian carp were released into local waterways in the Mississippi River basin."  Since that time, the carp have moved farther up the Mississippi, often the most populous fish in a region.  Because of their large size, ravenous appetites, and rapid reproduction, environmentalists are concerned they could destroy the ecosystems of the Great Lakes.

Carp DNA: Researchers treat lake like a crime scene explains biologists have been detecting tell-tale DNA from the fish, although large populations have not yet been sighted.  That much is science.  The interpretation of the findings is muddy, just like a water habitat with a large population of carp.  Some claim that the DNA does not prove the fish are reproducing in the Great Lakes.  It could have come from dead carp, not live carp, that had been dumped into the lakes.

There are local interests involved - Illinois has constructed locks and waterways connecting the Mississippi with Lake Michigan for commerce.  States Michigan and Indiana want those waterways closed until they are confident in protective measures against the migration of the species. The Close All Routes and Prevent Asian Carp Today (or CARP ACT) would do just that - however Illinois officials are reluctant to close the Chicago-area locks.

Where's Brutus?

The U.S. Geological Survey has fitted a North Pole wolf nicknamed Brutus, with a high-tech GPS/Argos tracking collar.  This allows researchers to track Brutus and his wolf pack via satellite.  To extend battery life, the collar accumulates his travel over four days with GPS coordinates, and then transmits the data via VHF to the ARGOS satellites. 

Wiki explains the Arctic Wolf is also called a Polar Wolf or White Wolf.  They range from 3 feet to 6 feet long, occasionally weighing up to 175 pounds.  It is a unique animal, being able to survive for years in sub-zero temperatures, and even 5 months of continuous darkness every year.  Because of the scarcity of food, they roam up to 1000 square miles and eat even the bones of their prey.

Because researchers originally captured Brutus in a specific area, they have been able to obtain additional data on the wolf pack from a manned weather station.  The GPS data confirms the sightings of Brutus by the weather station personnel.  The pack currently consists of 23-25 wolves. 

Wolves of the High Arctic is a blog of Brutus and his journeys through this Arctic Night.  The blog includes a fascinating spaghetti map of Brutus' movement in the Arctic, in addition to photographs of the wolf pack by the Eureka Weather Station personnel.  Remember, this wolf pack is traveling in absolute darkness.  The last entry has Brutus and his fellow wolves at the Axel Hieberg Island.  The wolves are at the base of the White Glacier, but researchers believe they have little motivation to climb into this ice field.

Mmm.  We have an interesting world, don't we?

Amazon Prepares for the Tablet Wars

Business and tech journals are convinced that Apple is about to announce a tablet computer that will compete with the Amazon Kindle and other book readers.  Apparently the business managers at Amazon believe the rumors as well, because they have begun to make some changes.  Isn't competition great?

One of the first surprises was Amazon to give a bigger cut of Kindle e-book sales to authors, publishers.   As the title suggests, Amazon wants to woo publishers and authors the old-fashioned way - with money.  Amazon is willing to offer authors 70 percent royalties minus delivery costs of about 6 cents per ebook unit.  Previously authors earned about 30 percent from every ebook sale.  (There are some conditions to this royalty offer.)  Amazon is rightly concerned about the counter-culture long associated with Apple and its ability to charge premium prices.  Smart move, Amazon. 

Anyone with knowledge of American football knows that a team cannot win if it only plays defense.  (Of course the Arizona Cardinals tried the converse last weekend and failed, but that is a story for a sportswriter.)  Amazon is also going on the offensive, even taking the battle to Apple's turf - Amazon Opens Kindle to Developers.  To compete with Apple's wildly popular apps, Amazon now offers a Kindle Development Kit (KDK).  To woo app developers, Amazon is offering 70% royalties on these products which will be sold on the Kindle store as well. 

Apple Tablet Keeps Kindle on Its Toes explains that Apple has been talking with publishers, attempting to attract them with premium-priced content.  Because the Kindle is very feature limited, users can expect to read a book similar to a printed book, but little else.  Speculation is that Apple will offer video clips, author interviews and insights, in addition to traditional ebook content.  Harvesting its counter-culture mystique, Apple will charge more. 

It is difficult to imagine that Apple can compete on price with either the tablet or ebooks.  No doubt though, they will erode Kindle's overwhelming market share of ebook readers.  How much is what makes this interesting.  Book readers will benefit though - competition is a wonderful thing.